


each breath you take; brand new beginning

by s0dafucker



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Canon, aftermath of a friends with benefits relationship, breakup ish, theyre cool in college!!, theyre freezing cold outside a frat house in college
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 13:23:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13881750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s0dafucker/pseuds/s0dafucker
Summary: there’s a cigarette between his teeth. michael doesn’t smoke.





	each breath you take; brand new beginning

there’s a cigarette between his teeth. michael doesn’t smoke.

jeremy exhales, and his breath mingles with the air, the smell of nicotine and  _ cold; _ neither of them should be outside at this hour. he wraps his jacket tighter around himself and wishes the distance between them could be easily closed by reaching his hand out, that they could meet in the middle and walk to his house to play video games in the basement. 

michael flicks ash onto the pavement and neither of them speak. jeremy watches his mouth, the heat of his cigarette, the way his lips move when he exhales; it’s almost erotic, watching him smoke, avoiding his eyes because he knows he will drown in them. he twists his belt loop, fabric under the pads of his fingers, rough against his cold hands, skin too thin, too pale hands. 

his jacket hangs heavy from his shoulders and he wants to let it fall, let it hit the ground and let the rest of his clothes follow, press his body against michael’s, breath coming in clouds in the cold air, fingers purple, lips chapped and bleeding and pressed to lips and bodies that are more ice than skin- he wants to crash their mouths together until their bones meld, the marrow warm and pliable, he wants to be michael’s cigarette.

it is a funny thing, to be jealous of something that isn’t even alive, to resent something that will never feel resentment, and he thinks he is all the more angry for the fact that it doesn’t know the feeling of michael’s lips when it is being so perfectly presented with them.

‘penny for your thoughts?’ his mouth quirks up into a wry smile and jeremy is caught, heart stuttering, fingers stilling in their relentless twisting of his belt loop, noose around his neck in the shape of michael’s voice. 

‘i miss you.’ he says, and he knows it is a mistake. 

he knows it doesn’t make sense, they are so close, but there is so much distance in the proximity. he misses what they were. he misses the sound of his name in michael’s tone, like they’re treasured syllables,  _ jeremy  _ spoken like the first time every time, like it is a hit he wants to savor, something beautiful he is turning over in his mouth, and he watches him blow smoke into the air and imagines it is his heart, crushed into dust.

he flicks the ash from his cigarette, a small, irritated gesture that makes jeremy aware of his spine, the bones he wishes he could sink into, push himself up against this cold wall until he disappears. he can hear music from inside. he wonders who michael is going home with tonight.

his voice is bitter- ‘what do you miss? how easily you could fuck with my head?’ it’s like coffee, black, scalding his tongue, mug smashed on the kitchen floor and what the hell, heere, you  _ knew  _ and  _ when were you gonna say something? were you gonna let me down fucking easy?  _ and his head is cloudy like michael’s glasses when he leans in close and their breath mingles in the most intoxicating way, and he aches for those eyes.

‘i miss the way we were.’ it slips out- his throat is loose with alcohol where it would normally be tight with a premixed cocktail of fear and regret, his thoughts no longer safe in his head. his hands shake and he can’t stop himself from remembering the way they fit around michael’s hips- it feels like a lifetime ago that their hands could feel each other’s bodies in a way that was tender instead of violent; michael has come close to hitting him, slammed his hand into the wall and left a dent that jeremy kisses when he is alone, slammed his hand down on the drywall inches from jeremy and sobbed, choked, horrible sounds that make him picture something dying. he came home late from the bar with the business majors he knows- he finds himself drawn to them because they are everything michael hates- and michael was awake, studying on the couch, and he tosses ‘who’d you fuck this time?’ to him, not even looking up from his notes, and jeremy knew he had the strength to kill him with his bare hands, but it took a long couple seconds to put away the urge to try to hurt him. 

‘god, heere, what do you want me to say? i miss it too? let’s go back to the dorm so i can fuck your brains out?’ jeremy flinches. ‘you fucking-’ he cuts himself off and takes another drag of his cigarette, shaking his head. jeremy can’t look at his eyes. ‘you led me on. you have no right- you don’t get to fucking miss it.’ he looks at the pavement. ‘can’t we just let it go? we don’t have to talk about it.’  _ you don’t get to talk about it. you did this.  _ the silence is deafening. his voice hangs in the air like the cloud of smoke that’s gathered around them, the sharp consonants that cut through his paper thin skin,  _ you bruise so easily  _ in two different tones, two different michaels, and he misses the one that didn’t smoke. he misses when all his mouth tasted of was soda and comfort, and he longs to feel michael’s mouth on his own. he would settle for this michael, this imposter in a dark jacket who tastes of nicotine and copper, like ashes and the burn of scotch- he aches to taste him. the longer he stares the worse it gets, because he doesn’t have to imagine the way it feels to touch michael; his skin is an arm’s length away, the memories carved into his head with all the precision of calligraphy, a love letter he wishes he could burn.

he imagines taking a pen knife to his own wrist, his pale, pale skin and blue veins, michael said once they were the color of his eyes- and he imagines michael’s throat beneath the blade. 

michael has thought about killing him before. he knows it, he’s seen something in his eyes when he says something he shouldn’t, a remark that steps over the delicate line that divides their dorm and their life into manageable pieces.

michael sleeps in other boys’ dorms and jeremy tiptoes around at night, pressing delicate kisses to the dent in the wall and slipping into his room to hold his shirts, to inhale the smell of him until he is sure he’ll never forget it. he stole a shirt, once- only for a day, only long enough to touch himself, intoxicated with the scent of him, gasping his name in little puffs of air, shamefully desperate for the touch of michael’s hands, tears slipping down his face as he comes; sobbing, his lungs aching, choking on his own vomit, on his hands and knees in his bedroom, sick at the thought of what he’s done, sick with need, sick with the feeling of michael in his skin.

he twists his belt loop. he tugs at it the way michael used to, pull him close with those eyes fixed on his in a way that made everything inside him melt, his knees weak, and he watches michael smoke with a kind of longing. 

his coat slips down his shoulders- it’s a heavy thing, it was bound to happen, and he feels so acutely pathetic, like the world could melt away and he would be left in perfect clarity, begging for michael like it’s the only thing his lips know how to do. bruised knees, scraped with concrete, he is so, so pathetic, he is nothing but the sight of the smoke michael exhales into the night air, and his thumb strains against his belt loop until it tears. 

michael blows a smoke ring like a kiss and jeremy leans forward, unsteady, hoping to feel it on his cheek like the feather-light brush of lips; he can hear his voice, soft and honey-sweet, his breath warm on his ear-  _ we made it, jer. we’re cool in college!  _ his laugh, pure and gentle and he wonders how long it has been since michael laughed like that around him, like he couldn’t possibly be happier. he feels like he might be sick. 

his fingers are numb. he wouldn’t be able to hold anything if you handed it to him, a bottle would shatter on the pavement like his favorite mug, smashed to shards of ceramic that christine would spend an hour picking out of his skin while he cried.  _ ‘you didn’t lead him on. you know that, right? he never asked for a relationship.’  _ she tried so hard to comfort him while she barely knew the half of it. 

looking at michael now it is so hard to imagine that he was in love with jeremy- he can’t bring himself to look at his eyes, but he knows they must be cold, hard; the rest of him is already so sharp with hatred. it’s odd because michael was never sharp- jeremy was the corners and edges, bony elbows and angled nose, jaw and fingers thin, pale, cold; and michael was the softness that he fit into, the welcoming warmth that has vanished now. his shoulders shake and he can’t tell if he is shivering or crying.

there is so much he should say, so much that michael got  _ wrong  _ that morning, but he is terrified that he would still hate him anyway, if that was only the last straw, if his  _ leading me on  _ and  _ making me think you didn’t know, you fucking knew the whole time, didn’t you? you just wanted to fuck with me, asshole  _ are just the scapegoat for michael’s hatred, and any confession would be met with the same cold indifference. 

he pulls at his broken belt loop. 

michael sighs smoke.

it is silent.

there are words welling up inside jeremy like tears, threatening to spill out his mouth like a river, a waterfall, all the things he never said- 

michael snuffs the butt of his cigarette under his heel. the water freezes; jeremy chokes, his eyes stinging- he can’t tell if it’s the cold or if he’s crying or if everything about him is just breaking, shattering into little pieces of ice to be crushed like the cigarette under michael’s boot. 

‘don’t fuckin’ freeze out here.’

**Author's Note:**

> the first sentence was rattlin around my head for a while so i made yall read it twice  
> the title inspo is from under my skin by jukebox the ghost which is a fuckin lit song and was on repeat while i was writing  
> the alternate title is seven minutes in heaven bc like,, the whole piece lasts the 7 minutes it takes for michael to finish his cigarette  
> i read killing stalking in one setting and then wrote this and [medusa](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13864596) so uhhh i think they both turned out decent 
> 
> validate my ass if u liked this


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